I used to think travel was about checking things off a list. The Eiffel Tower, Machu Picchu, Times Square at New Year’s. I was raised on itineraries and guidebooks, where days were neatly mapped out in hour-by-hour chunks. Efficiency was the goal, optimization the art form. Even my vacations felt like work.
And then I went to Lake Como.
It was supposed to be a quick escape, squeezed between business meetings in Milan and a return flight from Zurich. I booked two nights in Menaggio because the photos looked peaceful, and I liked the idea of a ferry ride. What I didn’t expect was to feel a tectonic shift in the way I experience the world.
My hotel had that old-world scent of polished wood and mountain air, the kind that clings to your skin and makes you slow down before you realize you’re doing it. On my first morning, I asked the concierge if there was something “local” I could do, something that didn’t involve crowds or cathedral lines. He raised an eyebrow, as if I’d asked where to find air. “You go on the lake,” he said, as if there was no other answer.
By noon, I was on a boat.
It wasn’t fancy, at least not by American luxury standards. No plush leather seating or over-the-top cocktail bar. But it was perfect. The kind of perfection that comes from things made with care and used with reverence. The captain, a quiet man named Luca, had been sailing the lake since childhood. He didn’t say much, but he knew when to slow down, when to let the silence fill the space between engine hum and birdsong.
We moved through the water like a thought moving through memory, gentle and sure. The villas came and went, like dreams half remembered, and I found myself asking no questions, needing no answers. There was no tour script, no amplification of facts. Just the lake, and our small arc across it.
At one point, near Villa La Gaeta, the sky changed. It wasn’t rain, not quite. The light thickened, like honey, and everything turned sepia. Luca cut the engine, and for a moment, it felt like the whole lake was holding its breath. I didn’t take a photo. Not because I forgot, but because I didn’t want to interrupt the silence with a click.
I’ve lived in Manhattan for twelve years. I know what noise feels like, what hurry sounds like. But there, in that moment, I learned what it means to let the landscape move through you, instead of racing through it.
Later that evening, scrolling through my phone at a lakeside café, I came across an article recommending a curated lake como boat tour, tailored for travelers looking for authenticity and beauty, not bullet points and badges. I smiled. I didn’t need the recommendation, not anymore. I had found the lake, or maybe, the lake had found me.
Since then, I’ve changed the way I plan trips. Fewer bookings, fewer lines. More listening, more air. I don’t look for the “top ten things to do” anymore. I look for moments that make time stop, even if just for a breath.
And when friends ask me now about Italy, I don’t talk about the Colosseum or the canals of Venice. I talk about that boat, about Luca, about the lake that didn’t try to impress me, but somehow changed me all the same.
